“It’s their grave now,” he said on Thursday morning, waiting outside a motel in Boston Bar.
Chapman said the family was getting ready for a barbecue when they first saw smoke and, moments later, flames. He went inside to get a bucket of water and when he came out, the fire was licking at the house.
“Dad said, ‘Get what you can get and get out,’” he recalled.
The air became very hot as Chapman helped his mother, Janette, into the hole, which the family had been digging to repair the septic system.
Chapman’s father, Mike, a former mechanic who retired six years ago and moved the family from Mission to Lytton to fulfill a dream of living in the Fraser Canyon, climbed in beside his wife.